Hero (film)/Characters

Characters from the webcomic HERO. Beware of spoilers.

Generally applicable character tropes

• Animorphism—All over the place. The demons, for one, all seem to have human and nonhuman forms.
• Bishonen and Bifauxnen—Occasionally very deliberate, as with the sibling pair where "the boy" has waist-length hair and "the girl" sports a boyish pixie cut.
• Came Back Wrong—Fitting under none of the listed subtypes, actually. The protagonist looks just like Eira and even has some of Eira's personality and ability to involuntarily access his memories... but he isn't Eira.
  • Heavily implied of the two recurring golem characters, as well.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys—Sweet mercy, yes.
• Glamour Failure—The demons are occasionally drawn with clawed feet or hands even when they are not embedding their nails in someone's throat. They may also have different shadows.
• Only One Name—For most of the cast.
• Viewer Gender Confusion—Holy crap are there a lot of pretty dudes in this comic.

Major characters

The narrator

• Came Back Wrong: A benign example. While he certainly looks like Eira, has a similar skillset, and has the general idealism which Eira possessed, he is generally not accepted as a direct copy of Eira, since "A life once ended may not be remade". And according to Lord D'Urfe, he is no longer a golem, either.
• Fan Nickname—It's hard to discuss a nameless protagonist, so he was fanicked ASAP: Lost, after Valentine introduces him by explaining that "He's lost. I said he could come with me," and Vin deliberately misunderstands "lost" as his name.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!—Since he isn't exactly up to beating on Valentine, he resorts to throwing his notebook at Valentine really hard.
• Literal-Minded—Especially at first.
• Loss of Identity—Our unnamed protagonist, though it's not a loss so much as a general WTF-who-am-I deal.
• The Messiah—Deconstructed. People loved Eira so much that they are now fighting over who gets to take Lost home.
• Mysterious Past—Averted. The protagonist is ripe material, but the focus quickly moves from discovering his past to trying to deal with the interaction of past, present, and future.
• The Nameless—Not the only one, but he doesn't even have a set title or epithet, unlike the rest.
• Pensieve Flashback—The protagonist, several times—though he experiences it from the POV of the owner of the memory, the only thing he can do that deviates from the memory is to think... and technically, the ones in the compass and the City of Memory were Eira's.
• The Philosopher—Most notably him, but also pretty much every other character at one point or another.
• Replacement Goldfish—Valentine fights over him with Juno and Ganymar.
• The Speechless—To most non-golem characters.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy—Subverted. White haired, check. Pretty, arguably. Boy, definitely. But he's about as far from villainous or badass as you can ever possibly get.

The Duck

• Involuntary Shapeshifting and Voluntary Shapeshifting—The first harks back to the Duck's name. The second usually heralds a Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Morality Pet: It cannot fly as high, fast, or long as the others of its kind, but Valentine still loves it.
• Talking Motorcycle Sidekick—Of the non-snarky, Crowning Moment of Heartwarming-y kind. And sometimes not a motorcycle.

Valentine Liosbri

• All Girls Want Bad Boys—Granted, the women attracted to him are demons themselves, but the women are at least more polite.
• Anything That Moves—Or almost anything, as he insists. He has some standards.
• BFS—Probably qualifies.
• Cats Are Mean—According to him. The fact that people do all sorts of stupid things for Valentine and he never loves them back, except for the Duck and Eira, alternates between being played for laughs and for drama.
• Chick Magnet—At least, for other demons.
• Fingore: He breaks off all of the nails on one hand to leave them in Ganymar's throat. They are retractable, like a cat's claws, and the injury is mentioned to be extremely painful.
• Funetik Aksent—Averted with his Cockney accent, to the point where words like "moggy" are even more noticeable.
• Heroic Build—Well. He at least has the enormous muscles.
• Hot-Blooded
• Hypocrite: Valentine hates cats, but acts exactly the way he describes one to act, and has retractable claws.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold—He genuinely loves the Duck. He also expresses regret both for being a terrible brother to the Serpent, and for his failure to keep Eira alive.
• Loveable Rogue—There's that small matter of being rather blasé about eating people/golems, but as the protagonist's friend and protector, we see his sympathetic side very clearly... and, well, demons are supposed to eat people.
• Papa Wolf—To the narrator, of course.
• Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner -- "I've decided that I'm not very happy to see you."
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man—The latter to Ganymar's former. He is brash, foulmouthed, ruggedly handsome, and shows no affection to anyone except a few people. However, he did take Eira's death so hard that he created the narrator out of what was left.
• Tall, Dark and Handsome: He is fairly pale after being trapped in the watchtower, but takes all of ten panels to get a rocking tan.
• There Was a Door—Although he doesn't have anything against doors in general.

The Serpent

• Badass Nickname—He was born Venice Liosbri. As a demon, he is only known as "The Serpent".
• Badass Normal—He may not have opened the box his mother offered him, but is still invincible as long as he has people to protect.
• Big Brother Mentor—To a T.
• BFS—His definitely qualifies. It is half of an enormous fanged jaw.
• Dramatic Unmask—Inverted with his introduction, which was more of a Dramatic, er, Remask.
• Load-Bearing Boss—Inverted with his introduction, as well. The city Venice is his namesake, and when he takes on his more powerful form, the city along with his human form disappears.
• Noble Demon—He can do anything if there is a person he must save.
• Redheaded Hero—It is not his natural hair color, which further contrasts his nobility to Valentine's selfishness and Vin's detachment.
• Sleep Mode Size—Takes on the form of a child (possibly even children) when he is not at full strength.
• Papa Wolf—Both as the Serpent and as just Venice.

Ganymar

• Amnesia Loop—With regard to the memory of how Eira died. Apparently this has happened often enough that Juno includes it on a list of instructions-for-every-situation.
• Cool Unicorn—Not only is Nyk a black and white unicorn, but she can shapeshift—though, this ability is limited to other animals that are black and white, like magpies or killer whales.
• Hot Dad—In his former life, at least.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice—A magnet for this trope. In the beginning of the comic he was impaled by the throat with five of Valentine's claws, and recovered fairly quickly. His past human life was ended in a similar fashion. Just on a bigger scale... with more fatality.
• Locked Out of the Loop: No one will tell him how Eira died, but mostly out of compassion. Every time he learns what happened, he takes it so hard that he begs Juno to wipe his memory of it.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The former to Valentine's latter. He is gentle and kind to everyone, except Valentine, and has a frailer look (though he is no less deadly in combat).
• The Storyteller—More evident in the same-universe short comic Vefurrin, but his storyteller side shows through in HERO with time.

Juno

• Dual-Wielding—She fights with a matched pair of long, curved knives.
• Necromantic—In her past human life, she tried to bring back her dead lover as a golem. She got the golem, but it only looked like him.
• Mama Bear—To Eira. It's not so much that she reveals a hidden scary badass side, as that she cranks it up to eleven.

Eira

The following is SPOILERFUL

• Happily Adopted
• Mistaken Identity—Since he had the mark of Lord D'Urfe on his forehead and spent all his time with two powerful golems, both Valentine and the Lady mistook him for a golem as well.
• Raised By Golems—At Lord D'Urfe's behest.
• Posthumous Character—Despite Valentine's efforts.
• Replacement Goldfish—For Juno and Ganymar, who remember what it was like to be loving parents and treat him accordingly.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy—Though not villainous.

Other characters of note

The witch

• Wicked Witch—Averted. She takes the narrator in despite not knowing who he is or where he came from.

The priest

The Lady

• All Love Is Unrequited—Very heavily implied towards Valentine.
• The Magic Goes Away—Not literally, but she seems to be the landlady for the City of Desire (which is a place where one's desires manifest into reality). "It was better in the old days. It's hard for a city to stay magical once you start having to worry about paying for rent."

The fisherman

• Unusual Ears—Due to the fact that he is actually a wolf.

The tiger-voiced man

• Papa Wolf—To the fisherman. (There are a lot of protective powerful characters.)

Vin Liosbri

• The Chick: Averted. Being invincible, she does not have to be rescued by her brother at all, as opposed to her other brother. And to be invincible, one must avoid attachment.
• Women Are Wiser: Averted. She joined Valentine in jumping off cliffs and eating villagers while the Serpent stayed behind.

Lord Renard D'Urfe

• Physical God—He and the rest of the Baroque. Apparently it's possible for them to stop being gods, if they start to desire things.
• All There in the Manual -- His first name is only mentioned on the author's deviantart account.

The Red Rider

• Cool Horse
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Visually represented with an iron box that has absorbed her original heart. She is stoic and pragmatic when speaking to Eira, but her box cracks when she sees Valentine dying.
• Dramatic Unmask
• Dramatic Wind—Her hair and cape are constantly blowing in a wind that does not so much as ruffle Eira's.
• Fiery Redhead—Subverted. Her hair is only red while her mask is on. When she takes it off, it turns brown.
• Hot Amazon—She is easily able to carry Valentine.
• Ms. Exposition—Thanks to her, we finally understand what the boxes do.
• Statuesque Stunner—She is about Valentine's height, which is one head taller than Eira.
• Rapunzel Hair—Done up in a high ponytail, it still streams out behind her by six or seven feet.